1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to tape testing and more particularly relates to interchange testing.
2. Description of the Related Art
Magnetic tape is often used to store large amounts of data. Typically a magnetic tape is inserted in a tape drive and data is written to the tape. The magnetic tape is then stored. Later, the magnetic tape may be read from and/or written to another tape drive.
Because magnetic tapes are typically read and written on a plurality of tape drives, it is important that magnetic tapes function over a wide range of tape drive parameters. As a result, manufacturers often perform interchange testing on magnetic tapes. In interchange testing, randomly selected magnetic tapes are tested on a plurality of tape drives one by one.
Unfortunately, the magnetic tapes are not always selected in a truly random way. For example, test plans such as a Whelan matrix prevent samples from being selected truly at random.